Our experiment in heirloom blueberry cuttings continues over at Old School Tech, this time with a post on preparing the egg carton and starting the cuttings in potting soil. We also point out some of the early failures and possible explanations.
Trump Weeks In Review, 31 Mar 2017
“Weeks In Review” this time instead of “Week In Review”; I’ve had my head down for weeks on business events, and skipped last week entirely. The tenth week in to the new administration, a few worms have turned, but most worms have fortified themselves into various deep state bunkers. The biggest bunker is Obamacare, again our hot button bellwether issue. Clearly, Congressional Republicans can no longer hide the fact that they are bought and paid for by globalists. There simply is no other way to interpret the abject refusal to overturn this national abomination.
Leech City WTF, 29 Mar 2017
OK, sometimes I try to make sense out of Manassas city shenanigans, and put things in a nice lessons-learned kind of way. There’s more of that coming, but they make it harder and harder to generalize to most people’s local government situation. It’s tough to be “on” all the time when the backdrop is so bizarre. Today, I told a friend about some of this stuff, and he was absolutely incredulous. We’re waiting for a trigger condition to happen before we can reveal more things, but in the meantime …
Stately Features
With our Leech City work, we’ve been focused on Georgia laws and issues. However, we’ve heard from reliable sources that there are other states out there, and with different combinations of issues. In addition to the local civil affairs aspect, we’ve decided to analyze states across a wide range of issues that influence whether any given state is a viable candidate for long-term civilization growth (or any civilization at all). I would like this to have an open source aspect to it, and make the results public, so that many people can benefit.
Trade Show Skills, Part I
SoftBaugh has released an article on trade show skills. Trade shows are often overlooked by many small businesses, or approached with unreasonable expectations by others. Trade shows can run the gamut between inexpensive $100 or less booths at gun shows or local hobby shows, all the way up to many thousands of dollars for booths and accessories at industry events. Some exhibitors, such as those at home shows, will spend upwards of six figures on their displays, even building little kitchen, living room or deck mock-ups on site.
Heirloom Blueberry Cuttings, Part II, The Cuttings
Old School Tech continues its heirloom blueberry cuttings series, this time about preparing and soaking the cuttings themselves. Although this experiment deviates a little from normal cuttings techniques, it appears to be producing promising results so far. As mentioned last week, we had great results a couple of years ago from these same plants. This time, we’re giving it a try without rooting hormones, and with a simpler method that lets us take care of the new plants as a batch.
No Fructose Corn Syrup
At the trade show last week, no outside food or beverages were allowed. Instead, vendors inside were giving food and beverages away to promote their products to the attendees. Because our family had stopped drinking sugared beverages a long time ago, I asked the show operators if we could bring in water. The operators said no, that there would be vendors with water in the show. Sure enough, two major soft drink makers were there, and had a high percentage of their own bottled water brands. It turned out that this high percentage wasn’t high enough.
Small Business Credit
SoftBaugh has released an article introducing small business credit, starting with a company credit card. Credit is often misunderstood by new small business owners, especially in the face of movies and television programs which completely misrepresent the subject. Saved for later is the broader issue of business loans, particularly balloon loans. Balloon loans are a destructive weapon aimed directly at small businesses. This weapon systematically destroys many small businesses which would otherwise be viable, and financially wrecks their owners as well. We’ll cover these topics in more detail later, including some interviews with people who have lived through those nightmares. The important point for now is that limited and disciplined use of small business credit cards can be a helpful tool, while the larger loan options are best avoided.
Homeschool CLEP: Info Systems
The Thursday before the trade show, I reported that our homeschooled daughter passed the Chemistry CLEP, good for up to 8 hours of college credit, including lab segments, with a score of 57/80. The next day, she passed the Information Systems CLEP with a score of 72/80. She now has somewhere above thirty credit hours under her belt, but most colleges do not give credit for this particular test. She wanted to take it though, and it does help document some of her homeschool studies at a minimum. My children rarely ask for anything, so I indulge.
Heirloom Blueberry Cuttings, Part I, Background
Old School Tech has released an article introducing a new series on heirloom blueberry cuttings. This project is simple, uses simple materials, makes a great homeschool earth science project, and can create a large number of new plants from a single shoot. As the article mentioned, we had the material for hundreds of new cuttings back in 2014, but because of the subsequent burglary and city government shenanigans, we became distracted and those cuttings which we did process and start ultimately died from neglect. This new process is easier for us to maintain and monitor, so we are optimistic that it will turn out better than the previous effort.
» ( Read more of Heirloom Blueberry Cuttings, Part I, Background… )